By the Waters of Babylon
by bloodstained yinyang
Summary: Written long ago, before the third movie had come out it was written as a potential ending to the series, and I rather liked it, even after seeing the third movie.


Babylon.

By the waters, the waters of Babylon

We sat down and wept, and wept, for Zion

We remember, we remember, we remember Zion.

- Hymn

They all sat down, all the free ones. They sat on the grass, and knew that the grass was real, that each blade was not a mere compilation of ones and zeros, but a living thing, made up of atoms and electrons and chemicals. And each one was alive, each one had the miracle that machines would never have. And the wind was not a digital sensation, it was real, it existed. And the birds they heard were alive, not digital representations. And the sun shining through the little hole they had finally managed to punch in the cloud cover was real, burning in space and sending out light. Schrödinger's cat could not be both alive and dead at the same time, there was no deja vu, there was no glitches in the program to look for, because there was no program. It was real.

And the food they put in their mouths was simple, but real. It would actually make them full, not liquidized remains of the dead being fed intravenously. And that made this little, simple scene a hundred thousand times better than the best scene in the Matrix.

There were only ten of them, ten who remembered the Matrix. Ten with plugs in their necks, ten who could re-enter the Matrix... if it still existed. They ate in silence. All the other inhabitants of the city had been born free- former operators and sons of operators and daughters of operators, and the sons and daughters of those noble humans who had somehow escaped, who just walked back in one day, refusing to reveal how and where they had been hiding for so many decades. They had never known falsities, their senses had never been tricked so deviously, they did not know firsthand the enemy they faced. The citizens of Babylon were free.

Still the silence lasted. Nobody wished to speak. They waited for someone to be ready, someone to give them courage to do what they had to do: make the pilgrimage. Nine times before they had sat upon this hill, the limits of Babylon City, and had this moment of silence. Nine times before they had sat, and waited for something to happen. And nine times, they had gone home, at last, at sunset when it was too dark to make the journey, disappointed yet relived.

This time would be different. This time something would happen. This time...

Perhaps they would have gone, if He had been there. Neo. The One. John. It was hard to remember him, hard to remember his face, his smile. They had known him. One of them had loved him. She sat alone, watching the horizon, waiting, almost daring to hope. After all, he wasn't dead. As far as they knew. As far as they knew, there was still hope.

Trinity sighed. "ten years, Neo. Ten years, and no word." she whispered. It was the first time the yearly silence had been broken. But it was good. She was the one to speak, if any of them. Morpheus, he had known Neo personally, had found him, but he didn't know him half as well as Trinity. Chain, Pixie, Hydra, G0), FQ, Dixie, Frito, Link... none of them had met him. They had simply fought to be free, and one day, the Matrix was gone. And they were free.

The silence, was for the way it had happened. So many had died.. all the hapless souls still plugged in. Only the free ones had escaped. Some of them knew other ones, ones who had been in the Matrix when it was unplugged, ones now dead. It had been too painful to move back to Zion. Nobody wanted to live there anymore. A lot of them had died, in the final raid. Nobody wanted to live in a cursed city, not with a whole world to populate. They had found where the 'bots had succeeded in creating a tiny rip in the cloud cover. Years of constant work had made the rip cover a city. But on this day... they came here to dip their toes in the stream, and remember all the ones who had died. It was said that Neo would someday return, and he would return on this day to this spot. So it was here they waited.

The sun was low in the sky, and still no sign. It was nearing sunset, and Chain was getting a little antsy. He had been only 12 when the Matrix was toppled, and now was still the youngest, save Pixie. But Pixie was meditating, not simply sitting. Chain was more of an action man then a planning man. But there was nothing to do but rebuild. Rebuild and populate the earth. Something G0) was particularly keen on doing.

The sun was setting. The colors filled the sky, purple and pink and orange and red. Then, black. Black, with.. just a hint of green? They all smiles wistfully, each separately chalking it up to memories. It was the same color as a computer screen when first booted up, subtly different than the color of an off or dead monitor. Ah, but that was due to the refraction of the light from the stars, and the lights of the city, and the green was their imaginations, and...

Only Trinity dared believe. And thus it was Trinity who scanned the sky long after everyone else had looked down. Nobody wanted to move until she did, or Morpheus, but eventually they did. Some assumed she would sit there all night long. In ones and twos they trickled down the hill, silent.

Only Trinity saw the message in the stars. Only Trinity saw them shift, just a little- as they had been every night this past month. And only she saw the message written in them. She gasped, and turned a little pale. "Neo." she whispered, staring at the message. And in the stars it was written, the very same message as she had once sent him:

The Matrix Has You.


End file.
